In more than a decade-long history of domestic venture capital, investment teams across most top-tier funds have typically consisted of finance professionals with past stints at investment banks and blue-chip consultancies like McKinsey.

Over the past few years though, very notably, a new breed of investors has set foot in the high-stakes early-stage investing space, coinciding with the consumer tech boom in the country.

Recently, Harsha Kumar, who used to head products at transportation app Ola, joined Lightspeed Venture Partners, which has backed Snapchat, Nest and Grubhub, among others in the US. Kumar’s joining is indicative of a slow but visible change in the profile of VCs as funds look to tap product and tech prowess with the Indian startup ecosystem starting to mature.

Each of the top-tier VC firms in India like Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Accel Partners and Nexus Venture Partners has in this current tech cycle got on board product heads, techies and ex-founders who relate to young entrepreneurs and have a street cred to flaunt. For now, most of these hires are largely at the associate and vice-president levels.

Harshjit Sethi, an associate at Sequoia Capital, relocated to Mumbai last year, leaving his job at file-sharing startup Dropbox. Sethi says one of the fundamental reasons why Silicon Valley is so successful is because of its implicit culture of knowledge, which is transferred continuously.

“By having people who have been an early part of a successful company’s journey accessible to you as investors, employees or advisers, young startups can short-circuit learnings on how to scale, and save valuable time and effort,” he says.

Harshjit Sethi, an associate at Sequoia Capital, relocated to Mumbai last year, leaving his job at file-sharing startup Dropbox.

Dearth Of Tech Talent

Over 2014-15, myriads of investors put more than $8 billion of capital into local startups, largely in the consumer internet space, which helped these companies scale at a tearing pace. Before that, there wasn’t too much tech talent to hire from, say general partners at funds.

“The operating experience is always more valuable than finance or consulting in helping companies and potentially even spotting the best entrepreneurs. But the talent pool to tap into did not exist earlier,” says Avnish Bajaj, MD at venture capital fund Matrix Partners.

Some notable hires in the past few years with product expertise include the likes of Tarun Davda at Matrix Partners and Abheek Anand at Sequoia Capital, among others. TOI had featured these upcoming investors in a detailed article last year in April.

Since there’s been an absence of enough company founders with exits, most of the funds had to hire from consulting firms earlier. But things are changing now as a bunch of people who’ve been in operating and product roles are moving into investing. “I’d think there are still not a big number of founders available who want to do venture, but it’s getting better nevertheless,” says Zishaan Hayath, co-founder of edtech startup Toppr, who has emerged as one of the most prominent super angels in India.

In Silicon Valley, some of the most well-known founders like Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, of the PayPal mafia fame, have gone on to become influential investors. While Thiel launched Founders Fund, Hoffman joined Greylock Ventures in 2010. Indian entrepreneurs like Flipkart’s Sachin and Binny Bansal, Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have been making multiple angel investments, but since they run their own ventures, none of them has taken to full-time investing, till now.

Tech founders big draw for VC funds

“Having worked with three startups before, I felt that becoming a VC is the right next step for me. I have first-hand experience knowing what it takes for founders and their teams to build organisations and also seeing how small mistakes can make a big difference when technology is moving ahead fast,” says Kumar as she dons the investor hat.

Founders from this current cycle are mostly in their early-to-mid 20s who relate better with these younger investors. “Undoubtedly, the founder knows much more than the VC because he or she is building the business every day. Product folks are passionate builders — it works to communicate and understand their points of views like a builder rather than as a finance professional,” says Pratik Poddar, an associate at Nexus Venture Partners.

Poddar, who ran a startup in the social e-commerce space, brings in product and tech experience which he says helps him while making investing decisions.